Tag: Digital Media

Let’s answer your most pressing question about Obvious Child: Yes, Paul Simon’s song “Obvious Child” appears in the movie. Twice.

Unless you’ve been avoiding press about movies since January, you know Obvious Child is a romantic comedy in which the main character, Donna (Jenny Slate), has an abortion. But that’s not entirely what the movie is about; it’s a complete tale of a woman at an important point in her life. The decision to have an abortion is just one of many things that happens in Donna’s life throughout the movie.

But with that plot point comes a lot of baggage. There hasn’t been a movie since roughly 1982 (Fast Times at Ridgemont High for those keeping score at home) that treats abortion as a judgment-free fact of life. Slate used the phrase “matter-of-fact” in a recent interview with Canada’s Q Radio, and that’s the best way to describe the movie’s handling of Donna’s decision. (Alexander Payne’s 1996 film Citizen Ruth treats abortion as spectacle.)

And here’s the kicker: Obvious Child is funny as shit. It’s possibly the most laugh-out-loud comedy of 2014. The fact that it features a character who terminates a pregnancy will no doubt piss off a lot of people. And maybe it will change minds about abortion (though I doubt it), but it does something important: It treats women and their health decisions with respect. It’s worth noting that Obvious Child is written and directed by Gillian Robespierre (a woman, in case you’re wondering).

Donna is a struggling stand-up comedian who works in a bookstore during the day. After one stand-up set when she reveals too much about her personal life, her boyfriend dumps her; he’s been resenting her openness on stage for months. Then she loses her job when she’s told the bookstore is closing. Then she has a one-night stand with Max (Jake Lacy), a guy she meets after a show. They’re both so drunk she can’t remember whether they used a condom (her hazy recollections make for a few good scenes).

When Donna discovers she’s pregnant, she decides almost immediately—though not without serious consideration—to have an abortion. Slate’s performance in the doctor’s office is award caliber; she schedules the procedure for Valentine’s Day.

Donna leans on her friends for support, including her roommate, Nellie (Gaby Hoffman). Her mother (Polly Draper), with whom she usually butts heads, also becomes a source of support.

Then Obvious Child goes on being a movie about a human woman living her life. It can’t be overstated how refreshing it is to hear characters in a movie use the word “abortion” without shame or judgment, or to use the word at all (I’m looking at you, Knocked Up).

Romantic comedies seem to feature two jobs for women: Successful magazine writers who never seem to report and world-class PR mavens (does any Hollywood screenwriter actually know anyone in PR?). It’s a boon to the genre to see someone real, flawed, and whole. But Obvious Child isn’t just a romantic comedy, and it’s not just about abortion. It’s about time someone made a funny movie that reflects real life.

Playing this week

22 Jump Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Belle
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Edge of Tomorrow
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Fault in Our Stars
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Godfather (Wed.)
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Godfather Part II (Wed.)
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

How to Train Your Dragon 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Ida
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Jersey Boys
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Maleficent
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Million Dollar Arm
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Rover
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Think Like A Man Too
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Words and Pictures
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

X-Men: Days of Future Past
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

The most beguiling thing about Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida is its look. Its cinematography, by Ryszard Lenczewksi and Lukasz Zal, is so beautiful that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a challenging drama about faith, love, loss, and the ravages of war on identity.

Each shot is so artfully composed, in fact, that the photographic artistry at times threatens to eclipse what is otherwise an emotional journey. So many times Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) sits, her head centered in the lower third of the frame, an enormous window (or wall or door or cross) rounding out the top two-thirds, that it’s easy to get lost in the expanse of the background.

That’s a long way of saying Ida will have an effect on its viewers, though what effect will be entirely subjective—even more than most movies. I was moved more by its style, the way the characters are often dwarfed by their surroundings, and how the sun never seems to shine in the section of Poland where Ida takes place.

Maybe that’s part of Ida’s purpose, to show us how bleak and unknowable everything is. Its characters’ lives are overshadowed by World War II—Ida takes place in the early 1960s—communism, and it seems no one cares about the horrors perpetrated on them in the 1940s.

Those horrors are past but ever-present: namely, the lingering and horrible ramifications of the Holocaust. Anna is young, perhaps 20 years old, and weeks away from taking her vows and becoming a nun. She’s summoned to the city by her only surviving relative, an aunt named Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza, who should be nominated for every award), a judge and former prosecutor. Wanda is filled with regret, and decides she must let Anna, an orphan, know exactly whom she is.

Anna’s parents were Jews who were killed during the war. Anna’s real name is Ida, and there’s a family farm where Wanda wants to take her to learn her real family history.

One of the strengths of Ida is Kulesza, and the other is Trzebuchowska, who makes the choice to play Anna as largely passive and composed. Where Wanda smokes and drinks and gets into trouble, Anna quietly takes in her surroundings and observes.

The aesthetic refinements of Ida, ultimately, do get in the way of the story, though there is something refreshing about a camera that doesn’t move much, and lets its characters have space. There’s also a matter-of-factness to the drama, and Pawlikowski wisely lets things play out quickly, never letting a scene linger when it should end (perhaps that’s why Ida is 82 minutes long).

In the movie’s final half-hour, Anna is faced with many choices, most of them stemming from existential questions—live as a Jew? Live as a Catholic? Choose something different?—and there are no answers, at least not by the time the credits roll. Ida is a markedly different movie in a summer full of schlock, and the perfect antidote to mindless entertainment. There’s plenty of thinking to do during its brief run time and after its conclusion.

Playing this week

22 Jump Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Belle
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dirty Dancing
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Edge of Tomorrow
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Fault in Our Stars
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

For No Good Reason
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Godzilla
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

How to Train Your Dragon 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Maleficent
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Million Dollar Arm
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

A Million Ways to Die in the West
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Neighbors
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Words and Pictures
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

X-Men: Days of Future Past
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6 979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

The flat screen is unassuming—a 60″ monitor mounted to the wall in UVA’s Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library. Surrounded by chairs and headphones, The Niche currently plays a loop of video from the stop-motion animation program “Stop & Go: Made from Scratch.”

Sounds benign, but associate professor of new media Lydia Moyer sees it as a tool of insurrection.

“We’re used to narratives that start at the beginning and go to the end, but it’s not the only way to use media,” Moyer said. “There are other ways of working with moving images that aren’t necessarily narrative, and that expand the way we perceive things and think about things.”

As curator of The Niche, Moyer hopes to break the contemporary cycle of media exclusivity through moving image exhibitions.

“Movie studios have software where you can plot in plot points, genres, and stars, and you can come out with a calculation of how big the opening weekend gross is going to be,” she said. “There’s a formulaic way that decisions are made about what gets produced in the mainstream media.”

Moyer aims to present work that challenges traditional media constructions and represents other points of view. “I try to find work mostly like a moving painting or photograph. It’s not like a narrative, where if you miss the beginning you won’t know what’s happening,” she said.

“Stop & Go: Made from Scratch” is the fourth installment of a screening series curated by Sarah Klein, a San Francisco-based visual artist who began experimenting with animation 10 years ago. “I found some audiotapes in a thrift store of a man’s retirement speech. I’d done a lot of live action, but I didn’t know where to go with them until I drew a little character of the man telling his story and thought, ‘This is it. I can create him and his world and pair that with his audio.’”

A former sculptor, Klein fell in love with the genre, which she said “appealed to me as a very tactile and visceral experience.”

The craft is incredibly time-intensive, requiring artists to create and move hand-drawn cutouts on a paper background and film them frame by frame. “The longest piece in ‘Stop & Go: Made from Scratch’ is nine minutes long,” Klein said. “That’s beyond heroic.”

Klein developed the series to showcase emerging work in the stop motion field and “Made from Scratch” centers on crafting, horticulture, and food. Klein, who was interested in exploring a sensory-driven screening, described each of the program’s four chapters as “courses,” the second of which is on view at The Niche.

Beyond the intellectual and visceral appeal, Klein said stop motion animation allows artists to create entire worlds without a crew. “There’s a magical quality where everything is static, you’re filming, and then, when you play them in line, they move, become animated and alive. A lot of times you can see the moment of discovery and delight when an artist went, ‘Wow, look what I’ve done.’”

Seeing the world with new eyes complements Moyer’s goals as much as Klein’s. “Animation in an art context is a way of pushing against mass media,” Moyer said, since “so few people see it anywhere other than a in T.V. show or a movie.”

The project also goes against the grain with a highly Charlottesvillian aesthetic. “High production values will not always serve artists’ ideas best,” she said. “Just because something is handmade or old fashioned in process doesn’t mean it’s not interesting. It’s an appreciation, almost a senti-
mentality, as if something in the culture is calling for that sentimentality.”

In other words, intellectual hipsters, don’t sidle by so quickly. There’s a challenge to the status quo over here, and you’re gonna want to see it.

The second course of “Stop & Go: Made from Scratch” runs at The Niche through July 3.

It’s going to be an exciting summer at Light House Studio. The local youth filmmaking nonprofit’s website redesign is up and running, and they have a new location for their summer workshops while the City Center for Contemporary Arts—also home to Live Arts and Second Street Gallery—undergoes renovations. Inside the studio, a group of Light House students has been working on a series of short videos in partnership with the UVA Department of Neurology to help teens better cope with treatment of neurological disorders such as epilepsy, while other students have been selected for filmmaking awards at festivals around the country.

One of these award-winners is Sam Gorman, who stands out as a filmmaker to watch among Light House students.

Gorman began making films when he was 8 years old, when it was little more than a game he’d play with friends. When others lost interest and moved on to another game, Gorman kept at it, and in eighth grade he began enrolling in hands-on Light House workshops.

Despite taking almost everything offered by Light House, Gorman’s the first to admit that the one that was the toughest sell was narrative filmmaking. Feeling unfulfilled after the first two times he took the class, Gorman almost didn’t take a third round. Then, Light House Program Director Jason Robinson encouraged him to try after he graduated from Nelson County High School. Though some Light House students become filmmaking mentors after graduating high school, Gorman’s August birthday meant that he was still under 18 that summer and only eligible to take classes. He ended up taking the narrative filmmaking class, and out of it came something far greater than he could have imagined—a short film entitled Space Girl.

Working with fellow students Daniel McCrystal, Madeline Hunter, and Si Affron, as well as Robinson and other Light House staff and mentors including Aidan Keith-Hynes, Gorman set out to make a short film for the class. According to Robinson, “Half of them wanted to make a movie about a girl and her grandmother and the other half wanted to do something about outer space…and I said, ‘that’s the same movie.’” The result is Space Girl, a film approximately seven minutes long, with a healthy dose of special effects, outer space adventures, and a surprise ending.

From planning to post-production, Space Girl took two weeks to complete. Primarily told in flashbacks without any voiceover narration, the film shares the story of a grandmother’s outer space adventures, as told to her granddaughter. As for the surprise ending, you’ll just have to watch it yourself.

When student films are completed, they are submitted to film festivals around the world. Space Girl was well-recieved as one of 29 student films from around the country accepted to the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival Future Filmmakers Showcase. The short film was also a finalist for FutureWave in the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival, the William & Mary Global Film Festival, and the Competitive Shorts Program in the Virginia Student Film Festival.

It’s easy to see the influence of one of Gorman’s filmmaker heroes, Joss Whedon, in Space Girl. The special effects and off-kilter humor parallel what you find in Firefly or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, to name a few. More surprisingly, Gorman noted that he’s primarily influenced by Whedon’s “dialogue and self-awareness and how he messes with genre to do something new.”

Related to this is Gorman’s idea of “cardboard sci-fi,” which refers to the genre’s openness to self-deprecating humor, whether it’s purposeful use of cardboard spaceships, stop-motion animation, or a person dressed in a Godzilla costume.

While the spaceships and laser guns in Space Girl are impressive and convincing, Gorman’s other work sometimes takes a more playful approach to digital effects. In 2013, Gorman created an off-the-wall, chicken wing-inspired music video for the local band Dwight Howard Johnson.

In the video, two characters dig into a plate of chicken wings before leaping into a hallucinatory reverie bursting at the seams with chicken wings of all sizes. The purposefully outdated digital effects throughout are amplified by transferring the digital video to VHS in post-production, adding the grainy feeling of something taped off of MTV in the 1990s. One of Gorman’s favorite scenes depicts chicken wings growing out of the two characters’ shoulder blades before they fly away.

The video recently won Best Music Video at the 2014 CineYouth Chicago International Film Festival, which showcases work by filmmakers 21 years old and younger from around the world. It was also a finalist for the Sun Valley Film Festival in Idaho, the Pendragwn Youth Film Festival in Washington, D.C., and the competitive shorts program in the Virginia Student Film Festival.

Gorman has just completed his first year at SUNY Purchase and is returning to Light House this summer to mentor student filmmakers who hope to follow a similar path and share what he’s learned with local youth who are taking part in the numerous summer camp workshops.

“I like to be able to push kids to work on developing character,” Gorman said.

Ironically, his one disappointment is that the only Light House workshop he’s not mentoring this summer is narrative filmmaking. The days when he dreaded a third session of that very workshop are clearly behind him, and the future holds great promise. 

What local films have you seen recently? Tell us in the comments section below.

Wetwood Smokes

Earth Tones & Red/Self-released

This Southern California-based rock trio has released a gem of a debut. Mixing rock and pop together with the precision and skill of a veteran act, Wetwood Smokes makes quite a statement with this release. The swelling piano pop of “I Am the One” is college radio perfect, while “2am” is triumphant rock ‘n’ roll at its best. The sexy, mid-tempo piano pop track “Madeline,” is irresistible and the hypnotic rock strains of “A Better Man” make it a clap-and dance-along number. Josh Bowman proves himself to be a dynamic singer throughout, with raspy, sweet vocals leading the way, and the fact that these guys all switch instrument duties at random is a nice touch. They have an impressive knack for exploring relationship-centered material without devolving into clichés on this impressive first release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhj5zarx5_A

Jason Burke

Just a County Down/Self-released

Local singer-songwriter Jason Burke’s debut EP, Just a County Down, is a nifty collection of songs filled with charm and variety. You will be hard pressed not to enjoy the groovy country opener, “Stealin’,” in which Burke plays up the mischief, and on the stripped down title track he croons soulfully about a woman who clings to her roots and refuses to let the world change her. “Reflections” is an acoustic number that sets the mood for a tryst beneath the stars, and the funky closer “Monkey See, Monkey Do” is a delightful send-up of the classic Esphyr Slobodkina children’s book Caps for Sale. Burke stays within a comfortable if somewhat limited vocal range on these songs, but injects enough charisma into his performances to make a pleasant, cheerful album.

The Falling Birds

Native America EP/Self-released

Music is not a place to hold back. So if you have a strong set of cards to play, you may as well play them all. The Falling Birds does this on its debut EP by packing a lot of punch into five songs. There’s a balls-to-the-wall rocker “Darling” for starters, followed by a country bluegrass number “If Time Allows, before the ’60s-era surf rock track “Arms Wide Out” rolls in like a beautiful wave. “Dead Man Walking” is filled with fuzzy electric guitars, wailing riffs, and monstrous howls from Stephen Artemis, and the record subsides with an acoustic guitar and harmonica leading “New York Love Song.” There is an appealing fearlessness to the band’s presentation that fuels the energy up from the start and keeps it on high throughout this raw, gritty release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q27Bzw5hhNM

It’s not unreasonable to imagine that Tom Cruise, perhaps the last of the old school movie stars, had lost it. He hasn’t had a bona fide hit since 2011 with Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, and as good as some of that movie is, it certainly coasts on the strength of being part of a big franchise.

And as good as moments of Jack Reacher are, it left audiences cold (though how could anyone not want to hear Werner Herzog describe eating his own fingers to stay alive?). And forget Rock of Ages. Just forget it. And forget Cruise’s personal life, too.

How wonderful it is to report that Edge of Tomorrow has all the signs of a creative team and studio wanting to make a good, borderline great, action spectacular.

Cruise is at his best, leaving behind his maniacal laughter and smirk (mostly). His character, Major William Cage, is a U.S. Army public relations official, the American face of the Armed Forces in the wake of a deadly alien invasion that’s spreading through Europe and on the verge of destroying the planet.

When in London to meet General Brigham (an appropriately dark Brendan Gleeson), the man in charge of a multinational assault against the invading aliens, Cage is informed he’ll be on the front lines of the attack in France, filming with a PR camera crew. Cage, showing genuine cowardice, protests, and Brigham has him arrested, drugged, busted in rank to private and sent to the front, not just to cover the invasion, but fight in it.

On the beach in France, Cage meets Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), the face of Army recruitment, and the only soldier to successfully kill a bunch of the so-called alien mimics. And then, unceremoniously, they both have their asses handed to them. And then Cage wakes up the morning before the invasion as if nothing has happened to him.

Jokes about Groundhog Day aside, the reason Cage keeps getting killed and then waking up the day before he dies makes sense—at least as much as it needs to. It also becomes a nifty plot device and a source of humor between Cage and Vrataski as it’s revealed she once had the power to start over, too.

The several screenwriters and director Doug Liman (rebounding well after a bomb and a misfire, Jumper and Fair Game, respectively) make a wise choice in delivering Vrataski as the action hero, and Blunt nimbly toes the line between hard-ass and human being. She carries the movie as much as Cruise, and it will be interesting to see whether Blunt ends up in more action flicks.

And Cruise takes a risk—though “risk” to a movie star is a relative term—not just playing a coward but reveling in it and having fun. The aliens are creepy without being gross, the screenplay is smart, and Cruise and Blunt make a great team as they try to find the alien leader. Plus, Bill Paxton pops up giddily in a supporting role. Cruise’s next movie is apparently Mission: Impossible 5, so enjoy him in an excellent non-Ethan Hunt action film while you can.

Playing this week

Amazing Spiderman 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Belle
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Blended
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Fault in Our Stars
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Godzilla
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Immigrant
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Maleficent
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Million Dollar Arm
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

A Million Ways to Die
in the West
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Neighbors
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Palo Alto
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Saturday Night Fever
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

X-Men: Days of Future Past
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Sometimes it’s nice to see a nice movie. “Nice” is a bad word—it’s usually reserved for people who are inoffensive but undatable or your grandmother’s ruminations on her flower garden—but occasionally the word just works. “Nice” is a good description of Chef, writer-director Jon Favreau’s return to smaller stories after the gargantuan (and flat, and wearisome) Cowboys & Aliens.

Favreau is Carl Casper, an amiable but sullen once-hot executive chef at a Los Angeles restaurant who’s feeling stifled by owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman, walking a fine line between empathetic and sleazy). When an influential food critic and one-time fan of Carl’s work comes to review the restaurant, Riva informs Carl he must stick to the menu, which is chic-bland, and not branch out.

So Carl gives critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) the stuff on the menu, and the review is predictably horrible. That sets Carl off on a series of bad decisions. He starts a Twitter account with the help of his 10-year-old son, Percy (a fine Emjay Anthony), and tweets at Michel, not realizing that tweets are public.

Next: Twitter war. Carl offers to cook a new menu for Michel, who accepts the invitation, but Riva again refuses to let Carl make changes. Carl bails on the second review, and makes things much, much worse when he storms into the restaurant and gives Michel a verbal lashing that ends up on YouTube.

With no job and nothing to lose, Carl takes a trip to Miami with his ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara), and Percy. A late-night Cuban sandwich (with Inez’s gentle encouragement that he makes better sandwiches) leads Carl to acquire a beater food truck from Inez’s ex-husband (Robert Downey, Jr.). If it sounds like Carl is getting back to his roots by cooking food he loves, you’re on the right track.

Chef is highly predictable, but in the end that doesn’t really matter. What comes across is a genuine love of food (which Favreau has talked about in interviews) and the joy of doing a job that makes a person happy. It’s not much of a stretch to think Chef is also a reaction to the box office disappointment of Cowboys & Aliens, a big-
budget and highly impersonal misfire. Here Favreau is doing something at which he excels: Writing compelling, flawed characters who are overcoming personal and professional misfortune.

Not everything is perfect. The screenplay, like its characters, is flawed; Scarlett Johansson appears briefly as the front-of-house manager at Carl’s L.A. restaurant, and there’s a glossed-over and dropped subplot that hinges on their maybe-past relationship. I use “maybe” because it’s not clear. What’s also unclear is why Carl and Inez split up. Riva is just a device to push the plot forward.

These are minor gripes. Favreau creates such a feeling of goodwill that it’s easy to forget the script needed a polish. He’s excellent, as is John Leguizamo as his best friend and head line cook, and so is Bobby Canavale as Carl’s sous-chef. When the ending comes, it feels a little abrupt, but given what Carl goes through, why not end quickly, and happily ever after? Chef is too nice to grumble.

Playing this week

Amazing Spiderman 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Belle
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Blended
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Godzilla
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Immigrant
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Maleficent
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Million Dollar Arm
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

A Million Ways to Die
in the West
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Neighbors
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Palo Alto
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

X-Men: Days of Future Past
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

John Johnson doesn’t spook easy. An avid fan of all things macabre, the film director built his career on mauled bodies, zombies, spine-tingling hauntings, and heinous murders. But the pending release of his latest work has him shivering.

“The day Plan 9 gets released to general audiences I will be probably be hiding in a closet somewhere,” the Charlottesville native said in a recent interview.

Johnson’s trepidation is not unfounded. The film is a remake of Ed Woods’s 1959 film Plan 9 From Outer Space, which authors Michael and Harry Medved famously dubbed “the worst movie ever made.” But retelling the story, which describes the small town implementation of aliens’ “Plan 9” to use zombies to prevent humans from destroying the universe, became a point of obsession for Johnson.

“No one was crazy enough to do it, but I was,” he said. “I was working on another film and complaining about remakes, so someone asked what movie I would actually want to remake.” Johnson felt a connection to Woods that helped prompt his decision.

“Even if you don’t agree with the quality of his work, the idea of the relentless filmmaker is something we all agree with,” Johnson said. “I decided I would try to remake Plan 9, not to make fun of the original but to do what they would have done without the budget and time restraints they faced.”

The final product preserves its new director’s personal approach to film-making while offering 54 visual and auditory nods to the original. The film boasts several actors well known in the horror community, including Brian Krause (Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers), Mike Christopher (Dawn of the Dead), Addie Miller, the little girl who portrayed the now iconic “first zombie” in AMC’s hit series The Walking Dead, and Conrad Brooks, a cast member from the original Plan 9 From Outer Space. Johnson himself joins makes several onscreen appearances.

“It’s really a love letter to that kind of film,” Johnson said, who characterized Plan 9’s style as a type of “make-believe” underappreciated by moviegoers today.

“Modern audiences don’t just let it be a movie,” he said. “They don’t allow a fourth wall, and they constantly want answers.” He hopes that the deliberate “fakeness” of the Plan 9 universe will help audiences relax into an alternate reality.

“It’s not meant to be real,” Johnson said. “We constantly remind you with the costumes, dialogue, even certain situations characters find themselves in. We want you to just enjoy the ride.”

Plan 9 appears to be succeeding, with preliminary successes that include a spot in the Cannes Film Market this summer and a partnership with Spotlight Pictures.

“I’m definitely fighting for Ed [Woods] with this movie,” he said. “I hope people might look more kindly at him. I hope someone will hang a Plan 9 poster on their wall and not because it was a bad movie. Hopefully his story won’t be clouded by that legacy.”

Reserve a free ticket to see Plan 9, playing at Regal Stonefield cinema on June 3, through this link. 

~ Maggie Underwood

Carrie Elkin & Danny Schmidt

For Keeps/Red House Records

Whether performing individually or as a duo, Carrie Elkin and Danny Schmidt have proven themselves to be two of Austin’s most engaging singer-songwriters in recent years. For Keeps only furthers this opinion. Whether marrying dusty vocals on the charming “If I Need to Know,” or singing about the comfort of another’s presence on the Americana ditty “Girl in the Woods,” the duo is as confident as ever. “Sky Picked Blue” is a slightly bluesy, jazzy number personifying love as an irresistible force and “Swing from a Note” encourages sincerity through a country tune. The album has an appealing, easygoing way about it and musically Elkin and Schmidt are minimalist, often letting the guitars fill in the spaces between their words, coming off as engaging, laid-back troubadours.

Eli Cook

Primitive Son/Cleopatra Records

If you want one of the most enjoyable ass-kickings of your life, then check out Eli Cook’s Primitive Son. An undeniable combination of gritty rock, soul and blues, this album is a damn good time. Cook proves to be a charismatic guitar player and singer throughout, whether he’s pulling out fuzzy licks on the bluesy stomper “Sweet Thang,” or howling at the moon on the too groovy for its own good “War Horse,” Cook goes balls to the wall with his performance. He attacks the nasty rocker “Shake the Devil Down,” and switches gears with ease on the title track, matching guttural vocals with ominous guitars and a gloomy dread. Cook calls in a bevy of great support for this record as well, with Pat Travers, Sonny Landreth and Tinsley Ellis making an appearance. Full of attitude and panache, Primitive Son is an album that rocks.

Coldplay

Ghost Stories/Atlantic Records

Most reasonable people will admit that Mylo Xyloto was a bloated mess, so it is nice to see Coldplay return to form on Ghost Stories. For those who are curious what the album sounds like, take the more ambient, echoing qualities of the X&Y album and mash with some of the more organic, stripped down sensibilities of Viva La Vida, and you pretty much have the answer. “Midnight” features Chris Martin’s otherworldly falsetto set to a hypnotic background of keys and beats, and the opener “Always in My Head,” is a lush, dreamy, electric guitar track. In general, the album embraces a mellow aesthetic augmented by acoustic guitars and strings at different times, which make moments like “Magic’s” climax and the ebullient piano pop track “A Sky Full of Stars” so electric and thrilling. Ghost Stories doesn’t contain wall-to-wall hits, but its quality does make you forget about that other album.

It just so happens that Adam Sandler once made good movies. More than once, even. There’s Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. And on the odd occasion he acts in a drama, he gives good performances in the so-so Punch-Drunk Love, the flawed Reign Over Me and the highly flawed but watchable Funny People.

But whatever. There isn’t room in this review to lament Sandler’s career choices, and his choices are so spectacularly lazy, they don’t deserve lamenting.

That brings us to Blended, which is not the worst movie in the Sandler catalogue. The worst movie in the Sandler catalogue that I’ve seen—That’s My Boy—is so loathsome that if there were any justice, the people who made it would be kicked in the groin repeatedly for not fewer than seven days, annually, to herald the vernal equinox.

No, Blended is not that bad. In fact, nothing could be so bad. (Note: I have seen neither Jack and Jill nor I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.)

Blended, you see, has the one thing in a Sandler comedy that can elevate it: Drew Barrymore. It’s not that Barrymore hasn’t made execrable movies (He’s Just Not That Into You; Fever Pitch; Lucky You), it’s just that when she’s with Sandler, she elevates his game. Slightly. Her limited charm raises his populist smarm and the results are mediocre.

They did it with The Wedding Singer (bland but harmless). They did it with 50 First Dates (it’s O.K. despite its best efforts to be stupid). They try it again with Blended.

If only Blended did not open in a bathroom. Lauren (Barrymore) is on the phone to her babysitter, asking her to fake an emergency call in 10 minutes because her blind date with Jim (Sandler) is terrible. Oh, and the bathroom is in a Hooter’s. Because why not set it in a Hooters?

Lauren is divorced (cheating assbag husband cliché). Jim is widowed (sympathy card cliché). She has two rotten sons. He has three nice daughters. Lauren’s best friend and business partner Jen (Wendi McLendon-Covey; just give her a starring vehicle already) is dating a guy with five kids who wants to take her to South Africa, and before long there’s some contrived nonsense that gets Jim, Lauren, their five kids and a whole lotta borderline racist jokes to Sun City. (As current as most of the gags are in Blended, I’m surprised Little Steven Van Zandt doesn’t pop up to chastise the entire cast; Google it.)

Barrymore and Sandler have as much chemistry as two old friends climbing aboard the money train, and there are maybe two laughs in 117 minutes (!). There’s also that maddening undercurrent of sweetness that exists in Sandler’s films to temper the bullying, race-baiting, and sexism. Even jerks have hearts, right? And Sandler’s daughters are written to be nice enough while Barrymore’s sons are written as turds. You know, ’cause boys will be boys or something.

Will Sandler and Barrymore end up together? More importantly, how is Blended not totally terrible? Again: It’s a million times better than That’s My Boy.

Playing this week

Amazing Spiderman 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Back to the Future
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Belle
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Fed Up
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Godzilla
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Heaven Is For Real
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Immigrant
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Locke
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Million Dollar Arm
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Neighbors
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Other Woman
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Rio 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

X-Men: Days of Future Past
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213